I feel as if I may have to explain myself here. Normally a movie like this wouldn’t find it’s way in front of my eyes unless someone recommended it, or the girlfriend demanded we watch it.
However.
I use an amazing program called Boxee that stores all of your TV shows and movies in one place, finds cover art for them along with the IMDB synopsis, and allows you to add them to a queue. My queue is currently 170 strong so don’t worry readers, you’ve got plenty coming. Anyway this movie wound up on my Boxee and due to me never seeing it, it was added to the queue. Every time I watch a movie from the queue, I do so randomly (unless it lands on “Schindler’s List”, then I choose again). The other night I was lucky enough to randomly choose “Crazy Stupid Love”, and let me tell you that I was pleasantly surprised.
First off, Ryan Gosling is God. He had never appeared on my radar until I saw “Fracture” awhile back and while I wasn’t completely enamored with the movie, his acting was definitely great. After seeing “Drive” a few months ago I knew that he was someone to pay attention to. In “Crazy Stupid Love” he plays Jacob, a smooth-talking womanizer who decides to reach out to Cal, Steve Carell’s awkward, currently single father character. Think of it as the American version of “Love Actually”, mainly since we follow several different story lines with different characters that may or may not have anything to do with one another until the very end. The opening scene has Carell and wife Julianne Moore discussing divorce over dinner, which basically sets the tone for the rest of the movie. You can kind of guess what happens next with Carell; heads to bar, sees suave Ryan Gosling, Gosling decides to help Carell “find his misplaced manhood”, hilarity and sexiness ensue. One of the other spectrums follows Emma Stone, as pretty as ever (I saw her in real life once, from a safe distance of about 50 yards), portraying a young student preparing for the state bar exam and dealing with Josh Groban as her boyfriend. Her story actually intertwines earlier on when we first meet Jacob; she’s his first target of the story. Her story becomes the conflicted one since she is slowly persuaded by her friend that the current boyfriend isn’t worth it and that she needs to get out and have some fun. Once again, hilarity and sexiness ensue. The last group we get to follow are Cal’s son Robbie and his babysitter Jessica. Robbie is 14 and is walked in on during…man things by the babysitter, 17. Robbie divulges to Jessica that he is in love with her and will do anything to date her, but unfortunately for him Jessica is into an older man…Robbie’s father, Cal. See how this is all starting to come together?
All in all it’s a fun movie. Packed with great dialogue and chemistry between the actors, and speckled with appearances by Marisa Tomei (actually keeping her clothes on) and Kevin Bacon, the catalyst for divorce between Carell and Moore. It’s fun to watch the stories intertwine and wonder if this actually happens to people in real life. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for an event like this.
DIRECTOR’S CUT: It’s not a chick-flick boys, so don’t be turned off by the title. That and if you have a guilty pleasure for Ryan Gosling, watch it anyway.
The Scene Collector 